It was love at first sight. Those blue eyes of his. Sometimes they were a dreamy sparkling blue and you could just lose yourself in them as you stared at him and he looked back at you. Neither one of us wanted to be the first to blink, but it was usually me. When those eyes of his were that soft shade of blue-sky blue, I knew for a fact that his life was centered around me. No one else would do. Just me. And I have to say that I loved that about him.
Then there were those other days.... when his blue eyes turned cold. Blue like steel.... hard and non-trusting, ready to accuse you of not being all that he needed and wanted you to be. I had friends who saw those steel blue eyes and told me "There's another little person inside those eyes... the exact opposite of who was in there just a minute ago."
But how do you not love a blue-eyed cat? How do you turn your back on this fluffy long-haired Birman whose eyes penetrated your soul and just melted your insides down to the consistency of applesauce?
That cat..... that cat. A blue-eyed Birman. Long and silky-soft light gray fur, with lavender tips on his paws, his tail, his ears, his face. A picture-perfect cat-show-quality Birman, adopted from an animal shelter in a moment of weakness on my part. And all because of those eyes. I found him there one day but didn't take him home--- we already had a dog and a cat. But I just couldn't get him out of my mind all that day and night, and went back the next day to take him home.
It quickly became apparent who was the boss-kitty in that relationship. As beautifully regal as he was as an adult cat, he was merely cute and cuddly and totally irresistible as a kitten..... all of his lavender points hadn't developed yet, and he just had a silver-tipped splotch of lavender across his face. My husband started to call him "Bozo-Nose," a name which scrunched up that cat's face and made him appear severe and hateful. I don't think he ever forgave my husband for that nick-name.
For all the years we had that blue-eyed cat, he wouldn't let my husband pick him up, or barely pet him. He would walk away from my husband's touch and squirm and wiggle if my husband tried to pick him up.
I named him AngelBoy. We thought it was a little girl at first, and the kitten's ears were so big that they looked like wings. "Angel," I whispered to him, and he nuzzled into my neck. We quickly realized that we had a boy cat, and when I mentioned that to my husband's mother, she said "That's not a problem.... call him AngelBoy." I whispered that name to that bundle of fur and he nuzzled into my neck and put his paw on my face. AngelBoy. He didn't live up to that name as an adult cat. As he grew, his lavender points came out and his ears were in proportion to the rest of him. Such a beautiful cat... so beautiful that sometimes it hurt my heart to look at him.
That precious long-haired cat quickly decided he was a one-person cat, and I was his person of choice. My husband continued to call him "Bozo-Nose," AngelBoy continued to scrunch up his face and give my husband those hateful looks. When I was alone in the house, AngelBoy would follow me from one room to another..... sitting by my feet as I read, with his little furry head resting on my ankles. If I was writing at my desk, he would jump up onto a corner of the desk and watch what I was doing..... either he would be watching my pen move side to side along a piece of paper or he would be totally focused on the cursor of the computer.
If we had fresh flowers in the house, AngelBoy would daintily pluck a petal from one of the blooms and hold it gently in his teeth. He would bring the petal to me and drop it at my feet... a gift, an offering, or merely his way of telling me that he needed my attention. With rose petals, he would place them on the floor and then rub his face against their softness. It didn't matter what color the flowers were.... he loved them all, but especially the roses. I saved most of the flower petals he brought to me, pressing them into a little white envelope. But when AngelBoy started to break my heart with his behavior, the flower petals were only reminders of the damage.
That blue-eyed cat was smart enough to recognize colors... he loved anything blue..... certain deep shades of blue that we began to refer to as "AngelBoy Blue." He disliked anything with red or green, and he couldn't tolerate the color yellow at all. He wore a blue collar, with a little blue heart that dangled from it.... his pillow-bed was blue, and even his litter box. Blue.... his blue eyes just zeroed in on all things blue. I had a pair of blue silk shoes that AngelBoy coveted.... he would cry in front of my closet door till I opened it up.... and then he'd walk in and put his head on top of those blue silk heels and go to sleep.
My dad came to stay with us for a while when AngelBoy was less than a year old.... my father was with us for six months, and AngelBoy's allegiance switched from me to my dad. AngelBoy couldn't get enough of my father.... even following him into the bathroom and sitting on the edge of the tub while he bathed. When my dad and I walked through the back door together, AngelBoy would run to him first, rubbing up against his leg and greeting him.... and then, unless my father picked up one of the cat toys, AngelBoy would then say hello to me. I was in second place during those six months, but I understood the attraction between those two. My dad would play with that cat for hours on end..... until AngelBoy got tired and took a nap on my father's lap. My dad gave AngelBoy his undivided attention at all times, without having to take a break to cook meals, do laundry, clean house.
My father would sing Italian songs to AngelBoy.... he would call out his name and that blue eyed cat would come prancing towards my dad... and daddy would start to sing softly, because he didn't want to "scare the baby." AngelBoy would sit at his feet and stare at my father, listening to Italian lyrics as if he were fluent in the language. I would shake my head in wonder at AngelBoy's attentiveness to those songs, because if I played my Barry Manilow records on the stereo, that cat would scrunch up his face and walk to the other end of the house, as far away from the music as he could get. How could I have raised a cat that didn't like Manilow? I asked my dad that question and his answer was "Get some Caruso records... you've got an Italian cat here."
When my dad's visit was over and he went back to NY, AngelBoy searched the house for him. He would carry his favorite toys from room to room, looking for my dad, clearly missing him. His little cat-face didn't exactly scrunch up, but I would have sworn that he was moping, saddened, less cat-like than usual. I would walk into the back door and I would hear AngelBoy meowing as I put the key into the lock.... he would look up at me, see no one behind me, and he'd give one last pitiful meow and walk away. On those days, I could have sworn he was thinking "Oh, it's only you......"
And then it started. AngelBoy's accidents around the house. No room was spared in his quest to either mark his territory or announce his displeasure in the fact that his favorite person (my father) was no longer there for him. I spent a small fortune on carpet cleaners and wood polishes, and countless hours cleaning up after that cat. I bought additional litter boxes, so there would be one in each bathroom, one in the laundry room. The local carpet cleaning company would come once a month... the guy would walk into the front door and ask me "Still have that fluffy cat?" And I would say of course...... and the carpet cleaning guy would smile.
We brought AngelBoy to the vet's office countless times........ maybe there was something wrong physically that was making him have these little episodes. Countless blood tests, exams, even an X-ray.... that beautiful cat was perfectly healthy. Our vet told me that 'some cats are just like that..... and once they start this sort of behavior, they very rarely quit.'
AngelBoy hated those visits to the vet's office...... he let me know that fact with his 'accidents' as soon as we got back home. He also didn't like it if I rearranged the furniture, or if I had been out and didn't get back in time for his Fancy Feast lunch, because on that particular day he might not have been interested in the dry food I left out for him. He was full of quirks, that cat, and we either had to accept them or not. He was my cat.... I accepted them.... my husband thought AngelBoy was much too demanding for a cat, and of course he was, but after all, he was our cat. What else could we do but accept him?
I got so frustrated with AngelBoy at times that before I left the house on some days, I would call him into the laundry room, point to the litter box in there, and tell him: "Use that box, AngelBoy... before I leave this house, will you please use that box?!" And he did. Each and every time. He would walk into that box, do his thing, then walk out with a smug look on his beautiful face, as if to say "There. Are you happy now?" And I'd clean out the box before I left.... but when I came home, there was always a surprise waiting for me, and it wasn't in any of the litter boxes.
One of our neighbors was also a veterinarian and he suggested I make AngelBoy an outside cat. I just couldn't do that....... I'd had him declawed when he was a kitten, I'm sorry to say, and he would be defenseless out there. "Once a cat starts to go outside the box, they just don't stop," our vet/neighbor told us, just as our own vet had advised us. Our neighbor told us that he couldn't even begin to count the number of times he'd had to put a healthy cat "to sleep" because of this particular behavior. I just couldn't believe that my beautiful AngelBoy would continue on this path of kitty recklessness. But AngelBoy did. However, he also continued to use his box when I stood there and told him to. There was just no rhyme or reason to that cat.
The house we lived in at the time had a very big covered deck and porch around the back of the house. I told my husband that we needed to get it screened.... we could sit out there and not worry about bugs and mosquitoes.... and I could keep AngelBoy there so he wouldn't continue to have 'accidents' around the house. When my husband told me how expensive that project could be, I told him that it wouldn't cost any more money than a year's worth of carpet cleaning.
We had the screen porch installed. Our next door neighbor told us that she had never seen such a spoiled little cat. And of course she was right. But what could we do? We had this cat, he had us, and we had to find a solution to his thinking-outside-the-litter-box problems. We even went so far as to contact a well-known Houston pet psychic...... it cost us hundreds of dollars..... but even my husband (who wasn't exactly an AngelBoy fan) thought it was worth the money. The psychic told us things about AngelBoy and his 'living arrangements' that only my husband and I knew about. Everything she said about my blue-eyed cat was so correct.... how did she even know those things? We were so careful not to give anything away, not to say anything at all to give her clues. But she knew.... and she understood AngelBoy's behavior. She gave us suggestions, which worked for a little while.... but not for very long. "AngelBoy was the cat, and that was that," to paraphrase a cat book that I had been reading at the time. My husband thought maybe we should just give AngelBoy to the psychic.
There were days, and sometimes weeks, when AngelBoy was such a blessedly perfect cat. He would cuddle up under my chin at night, so close that it was like he wanted to become part of me. His paws would rub my neck and my face, softly, purposely, as if his cat-destiny was to let me know that he was truly my cat after all. And then there were days on end when I would go around the house saying "AngelBoy! What did you do?!" Of course he knew what he had done, and he would sit there watching as I cleaned up his messes, his 'accidents.' My husband said they weren't accidents at all..... that he did those things on purpose. On the days when I called the carpet cleaning guy to the house, AngelBoy would sit there and watch the man work... those blue eyes of his following the carpet guy from room to room, as if to say "You missed a spot....."
When we decided to move out of the Houston suburbs, I wondered about AngelBoy and his 'problems.' Moving out of the house that AngelBoy grew up in and seemed to love, in his own kitty way, wasn't going to be easy for that blue eyed cat. This house has porches and decks going all around it, but none of them are screened. There was no way, absolutely no way, that I could have let AngelBoy out on the porches of this house. We're out in the country here..... surrounded by woods and hills that are filled with coyotes and bobcats and who-knows-what-all. AngelBoy would have been the perfect target for those animals. In the sunlight, AngelBoy's fluffy gray fur was nearly iridescent with those lavender tips of color........ he wouldn't have survived out here on the property. And he was such a curious cat... I know he wouldn't have been content to stay near the house... he would have been off wandering, exploring.... in the middle of the pastures and probably even walking down the road as if he owned it.
Clearly, AngelBoy was not happy when we moved up to the Hill Country. As much as I loved this big old historic house, that blue eyed cat of mine just hated it. It didn't matter that he had screen doors to look out of..... he wanted his porch, and his porch furniture, and his Clear Lake City kingdom that he grew up in. And so it began.... the onslaught of 'accidents,' day after blessed day. I even got tired of hearing myself say "AngelBoy! What did you do?!" As soon as I saw the tell-tale marks of his displeasure, I just walked to the closet and got out the cleaning supplies.... and I cleaned...... and cleaned....... every day, every day.
I didn't know what exactly was making me sick, but it was showing in my face and in my eyes.... the three months of unpacking and settling into this house..... the constant cleaning-up after AngelBoy.... getting used to this country setting after having all the conveniences of the city...... I just felt sick, all the time, for days and days on end.
AngelBoy's final insult came on a bright and sunny glorious day..... nearly all of the boxes were unpacked...... mirrors and pictures had been hung up.... all the furniture was in place........ and I was beginning to finally see the light at the end of that just-moving-in tunnel. And AngelBoy.... my blue eyed beautiful cat... was having his accidents all day long..... one after the other..... and with the last outside-the-box adventure of his, he stood there in place, looking at me, his face all scrunched up without a drop of cat-love in his blue eyes...... as if he were daring me to clean up that mess. "Go ahead and clean it up.... I'll just make another one."
I walked out of the room and closed the door...... I went up the stairs to my husband's office and sat down and cried. When he asked what happened, I told him "We have to put AngelBoy to sleep. I just cannot do this anymore." I had never ever said those words out loud before, but I knew that once they were out there in the universe, they couldn't be taken back.
My husband looked at me and said "Are you sure?" I couldn't speak, but I nodded my head yes.
And just like that........ as simple as that....... we went back downstairs, I put AngelBoy into his carrier...... and we drove to the nearest vet's office. I told him AngelBoy's story.... we knew for certain that AngelBoy was healthy physically, but there was something amiss emotionally.... the vet asked me how long AngelBoy had been behaving this way. I looked that man right in his eyes, and said "Twelve years." He didn't say another word. He got what he needed for the procedure, and asked me if I wanted to leave the room.
I stayed...... and I watched...... and I held that blue eyed cat till the very end of his last breath. When the needle went into his paw, my head fell against my husband's chest and it was hard even for me to breathe..... and so hard to believe what I'd just done. No going back.... there was no going back...... and as much as I hate to say this, I knew then, and I know now, that it was the absolute right thing to do.
AngelBoy's last day was in June of 2009. To this day, to this very minute, to this very second as I type, the pain and the loss is unbearable. Not a day goes by that I don't see those blue eyes. Of course, I remember all the loving qualities of my blue eyed cat..... it's so easy to forget his 'accidents' and his 'mistakes.' Those days when he scrunched up his face at me....... gone from my memory. It's the blue eyes and the rose petals that I remember..... his fluffy paw on my face..... and that blue eyed cat trying so hard to get so very close-close-close to me in the middle of the night.
We have had other cats before and after AngelBoy..... but none with blue eyes. I know that looking into the eyes of a blue eyed cat again would be impossible for me. There are still days that I can see those blue eyes of his... looking at me... claiming me for his own..... and I would like to believe that AngelBoy loved me right up to the end, as I loved him.
How can you not love a blue eyed cat who brings you rose petals?
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